Ubuntu Manpage: flashbake - automated snapshots with git

NAME

       flashbake - automated snapshots with git

SYNOPSIS

       flashbake [options] <project_dir> [quiet_min]

DESCRIPTION

       flashbake  is  a  tool  which  watches  files  and  automatically  checks them in to a git
       repository. The commit lines can be customised. It is meant to be run from a cron job (see
       crontab(5)  ).  Thus  it  simplifies  life  for  user by taking off the burden of manually
       committing changes and allowing one to focus on the work.

       quiet_min is a parameter to flashbake which tells it to only commit changes  to  files  in
       the project that have not been changed in the last quiet_min minutes. Setting this to 0 or
       omitting this disables the quiet period and flashbake   immediately  commits  all  changes
       when run.

       One of the nice features of flashbake is its generation of automatic commit messages using
       its plugin system. flashbake's plugins can pull in data  from  various  sources  including
       your  microblogging  feeds,  uptime,  weather  etc.   and  use that to generate the commit
       message.

       If you are new to flashbake, check out the CONFIGURATION and USAGE sections below for more
       information; you can also check the wiki (address given in SEE ALSO).

OPTIONS

       flashbake  follows  the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two
       dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see  the
       online documentation.

       --version
              show version number and exit

       -h, --help
              show summary of options.

       -c, --context
              just generate and show the commit message, don't check for changes.

       -v, --verbose
              include debug information in the output, useful for reporting problems.

       -q, --quiet
              disable all output except errors

       -d, --dryrun
              do  not  change anything, just show what flashbake would do if executed without the
              -d option (dry run).

       -p PLUGIN_DIR, --plugins=PLUGIN_DIR
              specify an additional location for plugins

       -r, --purge
              purge any files that have been deleted from source control

CONFIGURATION

       flashbake is quite easy to setup and does not  require  knowledge  of  git  internals.  As
       flashbake  requires  a git repository, you must create a git repository for the folder you
       wish to track by cd'ing into the folder and typing git init  (if  you  have  not  done  so
       already).

       flashbake configuration is done through a .flashbake file in the project directory. Global
       options for flashbake can be specified in ~/.flashbake/config where ~ refers to  the  home
       directory  (like /home/joe on Linux or /Users/joe on Mac OS X). If the ~/.flashbake/config
       file is present then it will get read first, followed by the project specific version.

       flashbake tracks changes to only specific files which it terms as hot files. You  have  to
       specify these hot file names in the .flashbake file which should be created in the project
       directory. Wildcards which are used in the shell can be used, like ? for matching a single
       character,  * for matching any number of characters and [] for ranges of characters ([0-9]
       would match a single digit from 0 to 9 in a filename).

EXAMPLE

       Here follows an example .flashbake file (taken from the wiki), with explanatory comments.

       # this enables the feed plugin
       plugins:flashbake.plugins.feed:Feed
       # these three lines are used by the feed plugin, see the Plugins page for
       # more info
       feed_url:http://www.mysite.com/feed
       # author is optional
       feed_author:Joe Random
       # limit is optional, defaults to 5 if unused
       feed_limit:3

       # this line is optional, omit it to disable email
       notice_to:joe@mysite.com
       # alternately, if you set up an ssh tunnel, you can set this and send
       # through
       # the tunnel
       #smtp_port:5002

       # hot files
       todo.txt
       my_novel.txt
       extra/character_notes.txt
       extra/story_bible.txt

       Any line beginning with # is a comment, of  course.  The  notice_to:  specifies  an  email
       address   to  mail  when  flashbake  encounters  some  problems  with  a  hot  file.  This
       functionality is not mandatory and you can comment notice_to: out to disable it.

USAGE

       This section shows some typical usage patterns of flashbake.

       If you run

       flashbake -c ~/my_novel

       flashbake will not commit any changes, rather it will show you the commit message it would
       generate  if  run normally. This is useful for checking that you’ve entered the options in
       the control file correctly and checking the commit message content.

       Running

       flashbake -d ~/my_novel

       would make flashbake do a dry run, and it will do everything except actually updating  the
       repository.

       One  of the most common ways to run flashbake is to run it under cron for example, putting
       this in your crontab(5)
       */15 * * * * flashbake ~/my_novel 5 > /dev/null
       would make flashbake run every fifteen minutes, checking in changes to the  hot  files  in
       the ~/my_novel directory which have not been changed in the last five minutes.

BUGS

       The   bug  tracker  is  at  http://github.com/commandline/flashbake/issues.   If  you  are
       experiencing problems, try out a newer version first, if available.

AUTHOR

       Written by Thomas Gideon.

       This manual page was written by  Abhishek  Dasgupta  <abhidg@gmail.com>,  for  the  Debian
       project (but may be used by others).

                                          June 30, 2010                              FLASHBAKE(1)